Fatal Reaction

know?”
    “We never really talked about the person,” explained Galloway apologetically, “only what they promised they could do for him.”
    “And what was that?” I demanded.
    “Give him an experimental new drug for AIDS.”
    “What?”
    “This researcher knew someone who was working on a very hush-hush new AIDS drug, something like a vaccine, only you took it after you’d been infected and it actually blocked the action of the virus.”
    “Danny was doing so well on the medication he was taking. He was symptom free. Why would he take a risk on an experimental drug?”
    “All Danny did was take medicine,” replied Galloway. “He didn’t want that to be what his life was about— watching the clock to make sure he didn’t eat for an hour before his medication, being careful not to eat for two hours after. The side effects were so terrible there were times he told me that AIDS couldn’t be worse. He had days that he felt so weak he couldn’t get out of bed, days when his muscles hurt so much he could hardly walk to the elevator, days when he couldn’t bear to be touched. When he came back from Japan, he decided he’d had enough. He wanted to give the new drug a try. Danny and I stayed up that whole night Saturday night, talking through his decision.”
    “How was this new drug given?” I asked, knowing full well what the answer would be. “Was it a pill?”
    “No,” answered Tom. “It was an injection. It was a series of injections.”
     

CHAPTER 22
     
    Danny’s ulcer must have been quite a nasty surprise for the killer. Without it the murder would have been not just an easy but an elegant one. If everything had gone according to plan, the killer would have been long gone by the time Danny had died quietly of an internal hemorrhage. I’m sure he never planned on getting his hands dirty much less on the bloody struggle that had taken place in that apartment.
    Of course, the story Galloway told about Danny and the experimental AIDS drug could have been just that—a story, a clever fabrication designed to deflect suspicion from himself. But if what he had to say was true, then someone at Azor was a cold and calculating killer.
    Whoever had killed Danny had planned it carefully, laying the groundwork well before Danny’s trip to Japan. Assuming it was a researcher at Azor, then the killer was someone of obvious intelligence, someone likely to do a good job anticipating an investigator’s questions and able to make sure the answers didn’t lead back to himself. Even when things had gone spectacularly wrong and Danny had started bleeding he’d kept his head.
    Not only had the killer managed to keep Danny away from both the phone and the door, but he’d had the presence of mind to clean up the apartment, remove the cassette tape from the answering machine, and get out of the building undetected. The needle cover had been an oversight. A mistake. The question, then, of course, was were there any others?
    If there were I was too sleep deprived to grasp them. Besides, there were still the Serezine interrogatories to get through, page after page of formal inquiries that began, “To the best of your knowledge and belief...” Tom and I plodded through them, flagging specific questions for Stephen, for the lead investigator on the Serezine project who had long since returned to UCLA, and for those who just required a search of company records for an answer.
    During bathroom breaks I stopped back at Danny’s office to stare balefully at the empty tray of the fax machine. I also tried to reach Elliott Abelman but succeeded only in leaving messages. Needless to say, I was eager to share Tom Galloway’s story with him.
    We called it quits at five o’clock. My eyelids felt like lead and every movement was as exhausting as a walk through tall grass. I had reached the point where my lack of sleep posed a very real danger that something would be overlooked or omitted. It was time for me to call it a night.
    Driving home I called my mother. Not only was conversation with her guaranteed to keep me awake, but I hadn’t spoken to her in a few days and wanted to make sure we were still on track with preparations for the Japanese visit. I managed to catch her just as she was dressing for a trustees dinner at Rush-Pres-St. Luke’s, but she was eager, almost excited, to share the details of what she was doing. As we chatted I saw no point in telling her that, depending on Takisawa’s response, there